Image by Orin Zebest Much has been said about Pepsi’s falling market share and its social media driven Refresh cause marketing effort. Extremists have dubbed Pepsi Refresh as the iconic symbol of failure for social media as a marketing mechanism. Like many conversations about social media, this view is too simplistic. It fails to acknowledge several key issues, including product weaknesses, the fact that PR and advertising were well integrated into the effort, and the debatable use of cause marketing as the primary thrust behind Refresh. Meanwhile primary competitor Coca Cola continues to widen the gap with its marketing and quieter CSR initiatives. The lack of a tangible theory of change, the over-focus on PR 2.0 participation metrics, and generally […]

by GeniusRocket President Peter LaMotte At some point, every teenage boy looks around his bedroom and realizes it’s time to grow up. The little league trophies. The Star Wars sheets. The Elle McPherson poster (okay, maybe those last two can stay). But anything that’s going to embarrass you when you bring your college girlfriend home has got to go. You don’t need anyone to tell you—you just wake up one day and know it’s time to move forward. Just like you wish your Little League career had, in just a few years, the term crowdsourcing has lurched out of obscurity to become a major part of the world we live in, especially within the marketing lexicon. Most marketers have either […]

Two weeks ago Network for Good‘s Kate Olsen and I hosted a U-Stream chat to field questions and answer on our eGuide about Cause Marketing via Social Media. Well, we had some video broadcast issues with U-Stream, but managed to capture several questions via chat. Here are those questions and our answers. If anyone has additional questions, please feel free to ask in the comment section. We’d love to continue the conversation. Q1. How can nonprofits promote corporate partners’ investments (as part of their CSR programs), in ways that add value to corporations and also resonate with stakeholders? There needs to be a clear value proposition that works for all parties. That means it takes more than simply offering a […]

In today’s online world, the term crowdsourcing gets bandied about quite a bit. It’s the most difficult and visible form of community-based social engagement. For companies and nonprofits alike it has become a nirvana-like state to attain. Yet, much of today’s conversations deal with fleeting uses of “crowdsourcing,” such as asking questions of Twitter communities. There are also plenty of interesting articles about benefits and the possible impact of sustainable crowdsourcing (as well as the tools to do it) but I find that the pragmatic how-to experience is missing. The issue with the resulting lack of information is that most folks have no idea how difficult sustained crowdsourcing can be. I’ve had a couple of turns at it myself with […]

The discussion about entering contests as a strategic decision was one of the most interesting aspects of the analysis from the Case Foundation’s second America’s Giving Challenge (Full disclosure: Zoetica is performing this analysis). In particular, Students for a Free Tibet carefully vetted the contest opportunity using a series of guidelines to determine impact – positive and negative — on the 501c3. It should be noted that nonprofits see the increasing tax corporate funded contests have created on both the causes and their networks. This creates a programatic challenge for cause marketing design (image by jblyberg). In essence, when considering how to interest customers and stakeholders, corporations need to invest more time into design. A crowdsourced voting platform may still […]

Zoetica has decided not to counsel potential clients on how to win contests like Pepsi Refresh, but many of you are asking for tips. That’s why when the opportunity came up to publish this guest post by Dan Morrison, CEO of Citizen Effect, I said yes. Hopefully, some folks will find it useful. Philanthropy competitions are the new fad and mode for giving away millions of dollars to innovative organizations trying to save the world. Last year the Chase Giving Challenge gave away $5 million to 100 nonprofits and this year Pepsi allocated $20 million of its Super Bowl ad budget to launch its Pepsi Refresh Project that is giving away a total of $1.2 million a month to innovative […]